


The Ghost in Cabin B

by Nerissa



Category: Nina Tanleven Series - Bruce Coville
Genre: F/F, Getting Together, Ghosts, Snarky Girl Detectives, Summer Camp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 16:46:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5463818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nerissa/pseuds/Nerissa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It started with a leaky roof, followed by a ghost that Nine just couldn't wait until morning to help, and now they'll be lucky if they live to see sunup.</p><p>If things keep up like this Chris is probably going to stuff herself in a canoe and go all Lady of Shalott on everybody, because really: she just wants to get some sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ghost in Cabin B

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LovelyPoet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelyPoet/gifts).



We weren’t actually assigned the haunted cabin. Nobody ever is, because . . . well. You figure it out.

On the first day of camp Nine and I were assigned an ordinary cabin, which is to say we got a claustrophobic standalone room with two sets of bunks and a window. We spent one and a half nights there with two girls I probably would have smothered in their sleep by the third night if our roof hadn’t sprung a leak on the second.

And by “leak” I mean it started to rain and a cataract of water came pouring in right on my head.

“That’s what you get for calling the top bunk,” said Nine, because she’s supportive like that.

“Shut up and help me wring out my pillow.”

She did, because she really is supportive like that. But she couldn’t fix the leak and neither could our counsellor, Tammy, who mostly seemed annoyed she’d been dragged out of her bunk to deal with the fact that ours was letting too much of the outside in.

“We’ll have to move you,” Tammy decided, staring at the swimming pool forming on my mattress. “But I’m not sure where. There aren’t any open bunks this week and we’ve only got two spare cots.”

I need better mental reflexes. My _physical_ ones are all right, because brothers will do that for you, but before I could even completely understand there were dibs to call Jess and Casey flung their hands up and called them. They got the cots, because apparently just _saying_ you want something gives you the right to it. Nine’s dad calls that Toddler Rules.

“As for you two . . .” Tammy looked at us doubtfully.

You could see the thought going through her head that maybe she should just call our parents and have them pick us up, but I knew how that would play out. My parents had thriftily farmed all of us out for the whole summer, my brothers as counsellors at a camp across the lake and me as a camper at this one. I don’t know where they went after that or what they’re doing there, and I’d probably pay good money to never find out.

As for Nine, her dad was off on some romantic getaway with an editor he was dating and Nine had spent the past one and a half nights telling me how much she was also NOT thinking about that. Don’t get me wrong, we want our parents to be happy. We’d just rather they got that way doing macramé or gardening, and not, you know, other people.

“I’ll go check with Maureen,” Tammy decided, referring to the camp nurse and one of exactly two Responsible Adults who stayed on the premises overnight. “She knows everything about this place. She’ll probably have an idea.”

Tammy ditched us in the cabin while we got all our gear together, and Nine and I both assumed she was waking up somebody—maybe the camp director—to get permission to call home and see if they could pick us up. Instead she came back with a key on a wooden board, like they give you at filling stations to keep you from stealing sole access to the bathroom.

“All right,” she said, “I think we figured something out. Bring your stuff.”

She didn’t tell us where we were going. Maybe that should have been a tipoff, but we were both still disoriented from the flood and the possibility of being stacked in a corner like firewood overnight when they couldn’t reach our parents, so we didn’t pay too much attention until she turned down a path and all the footlights disappeared.

Tammy flicked on her flashlight and kept going like this was a totally normal thing, but that’s when Nine and I both started to wake up and look around.

“Wait, what path is this?” Nine wanted to know. “I don’t remember this one when we—”

She stumbled over a root before she could finish. Because she was carrying all her stuff in front of her she only half-sprawled over her own sleeping bag before getting back on her feet, but it was enough to make her forget the rest of the question, so I guess Tammy felt she could get away without answering.

Something about the unlit path and the bobbing flashlight and the way she wouldn’t explain where we were going really got to me. It gave me that same feeling you get when all your brothers swear up one wall and down the other they haven’t been near your room all day, but oh, coincidentally they did hear a really loud noise, so maybe you should go check it out. But it totally has nothing to do with  _them_ , oh no.

(Nine is reading over my shoulder and she says that is a really awful analogy because nobody has ever actually gotten that feeling but me. To which I can only say if you are all really so lucky that you have never experienced that, you can definitely deal with my rotten analogy.)

Anyway, it was exactly that feeling and I was exactly right about it, because at the end of the path was one cabin all by itself, like something out of a story you’d tell around the campfire. It was so old it wasn’t even labelled with the number system all the other cabins used. This one just had a faded white ‘B’ on the door.

“Here,” said Tammy, with a really awful, forced cheerfulness. “You two get Cabin B. Nurse Barrett suggested it. Normally we’d have to run it by the director to get permission for you to stay here, because it’s not  _really_ in use, but we can’t find him anywhere so Nurse B said to just put you here for now and she’d settle it with Mr. Stinger.”

Absolutely nothing about what she said was reassuring. I still have a hard time believing she thought it was good news. If she’d wanted to make us smile she should have just pointed out that it wasn’t raining anymore, but instead she kept talking about the cabin.

“See, we don’t normally use it ‘cause it doesn’t have electricity or anything. But don’t worry,” she added, seeing the looks on our faces, “I’ll leave you a flashlight. There’s nothing  _really_  wrong with it, it’s just old. We keep it empty for emergencies like this.”

Well  _that_  was a lie. They kept it empty all right, but not in case of emergencies. We only had to look at the thing and we could tell why nobody slept there.

There was a ghost in that cabin.

The ghost in Cabin B was a teenage girl with dark hair tied up in a scarf. That wasn’t me being extra good at sensing her or anything, although Nine and I have noticed that over time we’ve gotten extra good at knowing if a place is haunted. This time we didn’t have to guess because the ghost was actually looking out the window at us, which let me tell you, was probably the creepiest thing I’ve seen a ghost do in a while: staring out like she was waiting for us to hurry up and get in there.

“Oh God,” Nine said unhappily.

Tammy didn’t seem to see the ghost, though she must have known something was up. She was already at the door, unlocking it with that giant bathroom key contraption, but it was rough going because first of all it was so dark and she couldn’t hold the flashlight to see what she was doing, and second, her hands were shaking so bad she kept dropping the key anyway.

“Look,” I said, “maybe we could just sleep outside . . ?”

“Got it!” Tammy gasped, flung the door in and then leaped back, as if she thought the ghost might come swooping out at her.

She didn’t, though. She just stayed in the window, looking out. Nine and I inched closer, and as we moved toward the steps we could see she wasn’t even looking at us. She was staring down the path that brought us there and she looked . . . well. It’s almost impossible to be scared of somebody who looks that sad.

“I don’t think she’s gonna bother us,” I murmured. We still hadn’t moved  _up_  the steps, though Tammy was bolting down the path as though she’d already gotten us all settled in. “I’m not even sure she knows we’re here.”

“It’s still haunted though,” Nine said. I couldn’t tell if she was happy about that or not, but as for my vote, I was already decided.

“Sure it’s haunted, but she doesn’t look like the angry revenge-seeking type of ghost, and at least the cabin is probably dry. As long as she doesn’t drool in my ear I really don’t care what she does. I want to go to bed.”

Of course it couldn’t be that easy.

When we got inside the ghost turned from the window to look at us both. She definitely wasn’t very old, or at least she hadn’t been when she was alive. Nine and I were thirteen that summer and I was pretty sure the ghost didn’t have more than four years on us (well, four living years anyway). She had a kind of dated, vintage look but not full-on Civil War or anything like that. Just pedal-pushers, a neat little crop top and her hair tied back in a gauzy scarf, which made her look like she could have been a school friend of my mom’s back in the sixties.

“Um,” said Nine, “hi there.”

She’s so much with the manners sometimes. No ghost had ever talked to us before so I don’t know why she thought this one was going to start now. I was already moving over to the bed and staking out a bunk—bottom one this time, though. I learn from my mistakes.

The ghost actually waved to Nine, an awkward little gesture like she was our new cabin mate and none of us were sure yet how to ask each other if anyone snored or, God forbid, wet the bed. Nine waved back, just as optimistic.

“Hi. I’m Nina,” she said, “but you can call—actually, you don’t have to call me anything. And this is Chris,” she pointed over to where I was stripping off my sweatshirt and climbing into dry pyjamas, “who’s only this rude when she’s sleepy. And hungry. And wet.”

“And right now I’m all three,” I muttered, slapping my wet sleeping bag over the second bunk, and chucking my pyjamas up beside it.

“You know,” said Nine, squinting at my makeshift drying rack, “you should really spread those out a little more. If they dry wrinkled, they might get—”

She shut up when she saw the look on my face.

I would have gone right to bed once everything was hanging up, but the ghost was still there and Nine was still introducing us and explaining why we weren’t freaked out at the sight of her, so I felt I should at least wait until she wrapped that up.

Of course  _then_  she had to say “. . . and we helped all of them. So is there something you’re hoping we can do for you?”

Because she is just  _so_  supportive like that.

 

* * *

 

Nine had to ask twice more before the ghost seemed to believe that we might want to help. I’m not sure if it was because she didn’t believe anyone could or if it was because I kept glaring at both of them, but either way she took some convincing.

In the end she directed us to a spot on the floor of the cabin where one of the floorboards wasn’t nailed down properly. It had a knothole in the top and the ghost did her best to show us how you could hook your finger through the hole and pull the board up. Of course Nine got right in there, and I figured I’d be kind of an awful friend if I didn’t at least try to help so I bent down to grab her wrist and pull.

The board only groaned at first. The wood was so warped and swollen and stuck shut it didn’t want to budge, but with both of us tugging it finally popped loose and we went tumbling back onto the floor.

We lay tangled up together for a moment, just catching our breath. I actually found it oddly cozy, the two of us sprawled on the floor. You’d think it would have been splintery and spidery and kind of gross, but instead it felt good. Snug. Even . . . warm?

“Nine?” I lifted my head. “Did the sun come up without us seeing it?”

She wasn’t paying attention to me. She was staring across the room—which  _did_  look brighter. Like it was daylight out, or at least not long after supper time—to where the ghost was standing at the window. Except she wasn’t all pale and transparent like she was when she helped up open the floor. Now she had a nice warm, pink look to her and she looked alive enough to reach out and touch.

“What’s happen—” I began, but Nine shushed me.

I remembered her telling me what had happened when she touched Cornelius Fletcher’s paintings, reliving some of his worst moments in battle, and I wondered if that was something like we were doing now. Except this wasn’t a battle.

“I think she’s waiting for someone,” Nine murmured.

“She does that as a ghost, too,” I pointed out. “Do you think she’s like Alida? Maybe she died waiting for this person. How are we supposed to figure out who—”

This time it was the ghost who interrupted me, breaking out in smiles and waving at the window when whoever she had been watching for finally came into view. She ran from the window to the cabin door, pulled it open and—

Just like that, the whole scene lifted off the real cabin like plastic film shrivelling and melting on a hot stove. The cabin left underneath the memory was our cold, wet midnight cabin, with my wet things dripping all over the floor and a sad ghost staring at us from her place by the window.

“Did you press ‘stop’ on the spectral VCR?” I wondered, reluctantly untangling from Nine. “If so, you hit it too soon. We never saw who you were meeting.”

Instead of an answer—or maybe  _as_  an answer—the ghost looked down at the hole we’d created when we pulled up the floorboard. Nine and I flopped forward on our stomachs and tried to see in.

“Did Tammy actually leave us that flashlight?” I asked. Nine turned to scrounge through our stuff, and came up clutching it: a big, heavy metal thing, like some holdover from a couple decades ago.

The beam was as bright as a ceiling light when we turned it on. It cut through the gloom of the space under the floor, and when Nine adjusted the angle of her wrist the light rested on a narrow, dusty box tucked farther along beneath the floor.

“Can you reach it?” Nine wiggled back on her stomach to give me room. I squirmed around until I could get my whole arm into the void.

“Just . . . barely,” I gasped, as my fingers hooked under the lid. I gave a little tug that nearly upended the box. “Hang on. Here it . . .  _there_!” I rocked and bumped the box along the subfloor until it was directly under the opening and we were able to fish it out together.

“Is this it?” Nine wondered, and I was about to ask how I was supposed to know when I realized she was asking the ghost.

The ghost nodded, staring at the box with a kind of anxious, hungry hope that made me so uncomfortable I had to look away. Nine was busy tugging off the lid and sweeping the flashlight beam over the contents.

“Camp stuff,” she announced. I was about to ask her what she meant by that when I saw the collection and had to admit it was a pretty accurate description.

The box held two lanyards, a whistle, some ugly shells and a pretty white stone. There were feathers, pressed flowers and beaded, braided bracelets.

Underneath that were the papers: a bunch of postcards signed ‘Mom and Dad’ and a stack of square, faded photographs with names and inside jokes scribbled on the back. You know the sort of thing:  _Mo and Bee, pretending they don’t hate each other_  and  _Lana, showing off again_ and  _Bobby and his righteous hat_. There was a photo of the ghost herself sporting big, round-framed sunglasses, smiling and waving and very much alive. I turned it over and read the caption: _Fun afternoon away from the ankle biters._

At the very bottom of the box was a yellowed envelope. When Nine picked it up and turned it over the ghost shimmered and bounced, giving me the impression that she was dancing from one foot to the other even though her actual feet were nothing more than a hazy memory.

“What’s in there?” I wondered, still flipping through the photos. Judging by the variety of faces and a few different haircuts on the same people, our ghost had been a counsellor at the camp for at least a few summers running. She’d also been something of a photographer; my mom and dad’s photos from those days aren’t even half as nice as these were.

“There isn’t a name on here. You’re sure I can open it?” Nine verified, and the ghost made emphatic ‘yes’ motions with her head. I thought that was a little extra-cautious of Nine considering the thing wasn’t even sealed, but she lifted the flap with adorable reverence like she was conscious of a sacred obligation and slid out two sheets of note paper. She scanned the first few lines of the top sheet, and her face went bright red.

“It’s a love letter,” she said. “I don’t think I should.”

“You can’t be embarrassed if she  _told_  you to read it,” I huffed, and snatched it out of her hand. I read a few lines myself and dropped it back in her lap like the thing had bit me.

You always like to think people from your parents’ generation didn’t know about stuff like that.

“Um,” I said, looking anywhere and everywhere but Nine. “So.”

“So . . .” Nine mumbled, and I saw the ghost gesture in her direction, clearly telling her to get over her embarrassment and read the thing already. But Nine embarrasses even easier than I do so I was pretty sure it would take her a while to get past that, and I wanted to sleep. So I picked it up again, held my breath (not sure why. Wasn’t like it was contagious or anything) and read.

It really was a love letter. Not just the extra-creative descriptive parts that made me feel kind of weird and itchy all over, but the other things too, like talking about running away together to make a future in the city, and how nothing else in life mattered but each other, and did Kathy feel the same way?

That was her name, the ghost. Kathy. The letter was to Kathy, from Mo. When I said her name out loud the ghost nodded, like she was answering a question.

“So you and Mo . . . I mean, I’m guessing that never happened,” I said, waving the letter and trying very hard to look grown up enough to have read everything in it. “Because of your being-dead situation.”

Kathy nodded.

“Right. And what should we do? I mean, we could try to find Mo and tell him you love him or what—whoa!” Kathy was doing her agitated rippling thing again, this time making ‘no’ gestures. “Okay. So, that’s a no to giving Mo your love. It—what?”

Nine was tugging on my sleeve. She had the second sheet of paper in her hand.

“This was in the envelope too.”

The second sheet was an unfinished letter addressed to Mo. I read a few paragraphs and then carefully, awkwardly handed it back to Nine.

“Okay,” I said, and felt my own face getting warm, “so Kathy clearly felt the same way. But this doesn’t help us know what to do. Hey! Hey, Kathy,” I waved the letter in her direction, “we’d like to help. Then sleep. So if you could just help us figure this out . . .”

Kathy scowled, like she couldn’t believe that after waiting for so long she’d got two people as dense as us. To which  _I_  can only say maybe ghosts should try haunting people in the daylight when they aren’t so damn tired. But Kathy didn’t offer to come back later and Nine was pretty caught up in the romance of it all by then anyway, so I was outnumbered.

Just as I acknowledged I probably wasn’t getting out of this any time soon, the cabin melted into something all warm and sunny again, and live-Kathy was back.

This time she wasn’t alone. There was a boy with her, a tall skinny guy with knobby knees, big elbows and a nervous smile. They were both wearing what I guess was some kind of counsellor’s uniform, white top with green shorts and a green lanyard around the neck, all pressed and crisp and clean. They seemed out of place in the cabin, which looked like it had taken a lot of living-in over a few weeks. Clothes were tossed everywhere, a slew of notepaper was scattered over the bottom bunk and I saw Kathy’s shoebox of camp stuff open on the floor near its hiding place.

It looked like summer was winding down, and the skinny guy, at least, wasn’t happy about that.

“Come on, Kathy,” he said, like he was revisiting an argument he’d made a bunch of times already. “You don’t want to change your mind. We had a really amazing thing going, don’t you think?”

“If I thought that,” Kathy said, like  _she_  was revisiting a counter-argument she’d made just as many times, “I wouldn’t be changing my mind. We _can’t_ , okay? It isn’t going to work after all. It’s nothing to do with you. It’s all me. I can even be the one to tell your dad if you want. Would that make it easier?”

“No,” he said quickly. His skin flushed dark red from the neck up. “No, don’t do that.”

“Fine, you can tell him. But either way, I can’t go with you tonight. Now can you get out of here? You’re going to get me in trouble if you stay.”

“Okay, I can leave. Just . . . come to the lake with me first. Please? For old time’s sake.”

“I shouldn’t. Mo—”

“Oh come on. It will only take a few minutes. I promise.”

Then the scene crumpled up and all the sunlight leeched out of the room again. I felt twice as cold when it was over as I had before it started, but not much more enlightened. I shot a doubtful glance at Nine, and she shrugged to let me know she didn’t get it either.

“Were we supposed to get something out of that?” I asked dead-again Kathy. I don’t think even a ghost could have missed how irritated I was by then.

Kathy’s only answer was to gesture insistently at the box. We returned to it, checking every item and then trading objects to check again.

“This is getting us nowhere,” Nine muttered on our second look-through.

“I agree,” I said, and didn’t bother to smother a head-splitting yawn.

“We can only get so far with charades,” Nine decided. “I think it’s time to find somebody who can talk. I mean, talk  _now_. To us.”

“ _Or_ ,” I suggested, “it could be time to sleep on this, and find out more in the morning.”

Nine shook her head impatiently. She unfolded her legs and clambered to her feet. “No. Whatever this is, she’s waited for too long already. Can you imagine being all cooped up in here wanting to tell somebody something, only nobody ever comes? It would be horrible.”

“Right, but how are we even going to start fixing this? We hardly know anything about her.”

I should have known better than to ask. Of course Nine had a plan worked out.

“We can go see Miss Barrett. Tammy said she knows everything about this place, so I think it would be worth asking her.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “in the morning. When she is probably awake. Not tonight, when she is probably asleep and will be as happy to be woken up as I am to still be awake.”

“But  _love_ , Chris!” she cried.

“But  _sleep_ , Nine,” I countered.

She didn’t laugh or roll her eyes, like I expected. Instead she frowned, and ducked her head like she didn’t want to me to see her face. She bundled up the dusty box, tucked it under her arm without looking at me, and started for the door.

“So . . . we’re doing this?” I called. But Nine was already halfway down the steps, so that answered my question. I chose a few of my mother’s least favorite words, shared them viciously with the inside of the cabin and hurried after her.

 

* * *

 

Miss Barrett still had a light on, which made me feel a lot better about tapping on the door of the little cabin attached to the first aid room. There was a rustle from inside, a call of “just a minute!” and footsteps that tracked toward the door.

I’d known we had a camp nurse since we got the brochures and my parents used that feature to help them feel better about dumping me there, but I hadn’t actually seen her until she opened the door that night.

She was about my mom’s age, kind of squishy around the middle with a mop of fair hair. She pushed some of the hair back from her forehead long enough that we saw she was surprised to see us, but she recovered quickly.

“Hello, girls. Is somebody sick?”

I guess being sick  _is_  the usual reason you’d knock on the nurse’s door after midnight, but one of us faking sick hadn’t been part of the plan. Nine assured her that we were both healthy, and rushed through a brief introduction. She usually does better with grownups than me, so I let her do the talking.

“We got moved to Cabin B,” she explained, “because of the leak in ours. And we found some things there, and we were kind of hoping that you could help us figure out what they are. Maybe when they happened, at least? And who some people are.”

“Well of course I could try,” Miss Barrett said doubtfully, “but it’s very late, girls, and I don’t know what makes you think—oh!” She broke off in real surprise when Nine held up the photo of Bobby and his righteous hat. “Oh, of course I can help. Those were  _my_ years here. Come in, girls, come in.”

I guess it’s true. Most people that age really can’t pass up any chance to talk about the old days, and Miss Barrett was no different. She ushered us into her snug little cabin without suggesting we wait to talk until morning.

The nurse’s cabin was the same size as the regular ones, but it was arranged so a grown up could live in there without having to feel that they were actually back at camp. She had a loveseat and TV, a little fridge and a coffee table with magazines spilled all over it. A crisp white curtain hung across the back wall, but she hadn’t pulled it all the way closed and I could just see the foot of a bed in the space beyond.

“Have a seat girls,” she said, and gestured to the loveseat. We perched on the edge of the cushion, box balanced between us, and tried not to look as awkward as we felt. “Can I get you something? Tea, or cocoa?”

We tried to decline, but she took a measuring look at both of us and seemed to decide, in her medical opinion, that cocoa was called for. So we both got a cup of cocoa whether we wanted it or not. I slurped obligingly at mine while Nine pushed her cup aside and got down to business.

“When you say these were your years, do you mean you were a camper? Or a counsellor? Because the person we want to know about was a counsellor.”

“I was a camper for one year,” Miss Barrett said, “and a counsellor for three. What year is it you’re interested in? Or maybe I should ask which person.”

“We don’t know her last name,” Nine fished the smile-and-wave picture out of the box, “but her first name was Kathy.”

Cocoa slopped and splashed to the floor as Miss Barrett’s hand wobbled.

“Kathy?” she repeated. Her throat worked a little, like there were sounds stuck at the back of it. “That would be Kathy McManus, I suppose . . . yes,” her voice softened as she set aside her cup and saucer to take the picture in both hands. “Yes, that’s Kathy. I took this one, actually. She didn’t usually let anybody else handle her camera, but I promised her I’d be careful . . .” She smiled wistfully at the shot for a moment, then looked back up in obvious confusion. “Where did you find it?”

Nine gave me a sideways look, like,  _here we go_. I took another gulp of my cocoa and tried to pretend it was as good as a bed.

“It was in a box under the floorboards,” Nine said. “This box,” she nudged it illustratively. “It’s full of Kathy’s things.”

“I suppose Teeny must have put it there,” Miss Barrett said quietly. “Lana, I mean—Lana Martinez. She was Kathy’s bunkmate that summer. I can see why she might have thought it was best to just put everything away somewhere, after what happened.”

“What  _did_  happen?” Nine pressed.

Miss Barrett looked uncomfortable, but she answered the question. “She died here.”

“In our cabin?” Nine prompted, which got a shocked look in reply.

“No! Oh my goodness, no. Kathy died on the lake. A boating accident. That was the official word, anyway.”

“But  _unofficially_?”

Miss Barrett looked even more uncomfortable, and I felt embarrassed for both of us. Before I could tell Nine to quit being so nosy, or at least being so obvious about it, the sound of a car engine filtered in from outside.

“Now who could that be at this hour?” Miss Barrett wondered.

Nine, who will probably never quit being so nosy or even obvious about it, squirmed around on the loveseat so she could get a better view.

“Hey, I think it’s Mr. Stinger,” she said, looking out the window. “Tammy said she wanted to ask him about putting us in the cabin but he wasn’t around.”

Mr. Stinger seemed to have tracked us down easily enough now that he was back. He called out a greeting to the cabin and Miss Barrett raised her voice to answer.

“Yes, we’re in here!”

Mr. Stinger came in at the door, out of breath and looking annoyed.

“What the hell is going on here, Maureen? I leave for one night out and come back to a note on my desk from a counsellor that says she’s putting two campers into Cabin B. I really can’t approve their using that cabin, given its . . . well.  _You_  know.”

“Your timing is marvellous, as always,” Miss Barrett said. “My two guests here are the campers. Their cabin sprung a leak. Surely you can’t begrudge them a dry bed, can you?”

Apparently Mr. Stinger could and did begrudge us a dry bed, but that wasn’t really bothering me at the moment, because as soon as he walked in Nine and I both saw he’d been the boy in the photo captioned ‘Mo and Bee’.

He was older, sure, and he was going pretty bald on top, but there was no mistaking it: he was the guy in the photo. What seemed way more important, though, was that the boy in that photo had also been the one begging Kathy to go away with him in the last scene she’d shown us of her life, which meant the guy who had tugged her out of her cabin that day had been Mr. Stinger.

Nine and I both frowned at each other, like there was something we were supposed to know, only we didn’t know what it was yet. I hate that feeling, when something you’ve forgotten is just creeping around the edges of your mind and looking for a way back in.

As a way of brushing that aside, I focused on Mr. Stinger. I’ve found the best way to get people to tell you things is usually to make wrong guesses—I have so much dirt on my brothers by now, you can’t even imagine—so I figured what the hell, and took a shot.

“You were a camper here too weren’t you, Mr. Stinger?” I said, like that was just the most fascinating thing I could want to hear about at this time of night. Fortunately, Mr. Stinger was the kind of guy who loved making sure you were right about things.

“I was a  _counsellor_  here,” he corrected. “My father was on the board of directors for several years; one of my family’s charitable endeavors, you know. He thought that a job here would be just the thing to . . .” he faltered a little, as if looking for the right words. “. . . instill character.”

I mentally subbed  _toughen me up_  for that phrase, because it seemed to fit the boy I’d seen in the memory, and rushed on.

“Well that is just  _so_  cool. I bet you have all kinds of stories about this place too! Do you know, Miss Barrett was  _just_  going to tell us the story of Cabin B when you got here.”

“I should hope she wasn’t,” Mr. Stinger said stiffly. “That’s not the kind of story the camp likes to have dragged up again. Maureen and I took on joint ownership of the place fifteen years ago in the interest of having all of that forgotten.”

Miss Barrett’s face twisted down at the corners a little, like she might not have put it that way herself, but she didn’t correct him.

“Forgotten,” Nine said, not exactly following what I was trying to do. “You mean, covered up.”

“No!” Miss Barrett said sharply, while Mr. Stinger choked quietly on his own shock. “No, there wasn’t anything to cover up. What happened to Kathy was a tragedy but there wasn’t anything wrong in it. She was just . . . she didn’t know what to do.”

“About what?” Nine sat forward, eyes wide.

“I really don’t think this is anything we need to discuss,” Mr. Stinger said firmly. But I wasn’t looking at him. I was looking at Miss Barrett and the way her eyes were swimming in tears.

“Oh come on Bee,” she whispered. Her voice cracked slightly over the last word. “It’s been twenty years now . . . what does it matter anymore? Kathy deserves a little peace.”

“I hardly see how raking up a suicide will give anybody any peace!” Mr. Stinger blustered, and then it was my turn to splash my cocoa. Because whatever we’d expected, I don’t think it had been a suicide.

“She killed herself?” Nine sounded pretty shaken up herself, so I put my cocoa down to squeeze her hand.

“We don’t  _know_ ,” Miss Barrett said quietly. She looked up at Mr. Stinger, like she expected him to squeeze _her_ hand, but you could tell just by the way he was holding himself he was more likely to wring her neck for bringing all this up. “She was found in the lake. There was an injury to her head, and everybody put it down to her taking a canoe out without a buddy just as a storm was coming up. But Kathy knew better. She wouldn’t have done that.”

“Not even if she was really upset?” I suggested, remembering the look on her face as Mr. Stinger had dragged her out of the cabin. “Not even if somebody made her _really_  upset?”

Miss Barrett went very still.

“What do you mean?” she said, in a different tone. I could see that was the moment she remembered Nine and I had been staying in Cabin B for at least a couple hours, and from the way Tammy acted around the place, you  _can’t_  tell me there weren’t ghost stories connected to that cabin. Miss Barrett was bound to have heard a few of them over the years.

“I mean,” I said, “what if somebody did something—said something—that got her so upset she couldn’t even think straight? Would she have gone out on the lake by herself then?”

“No,” Miss Barrett said sharply. “No, she would not. Do you know, girls, I think Mr. Stinger is right, it probably is unwise for you to be in that cabin. It’s quite out of date and I only insisted we keep it up for so long due to . . . sentimental reasons. Let’s see about getting you some blankets and finding a different place to spend the night, shall we?”

“Wait,” said Nine. She was squinting back and forth between Miss Barrett and Mr. Stinger, and I could tell, just from the way she was sitting, that the weird little thought we both felt we were missing had found its way inside her head.

I know that look she gets.

I also know it almost always leads us right into trouble, so I probably should have got my guard up then, but what can I say: I have a real blind spot sometimes when it comes to Nine.

“You called him Bee,” she said. Miss Barrett looked surprised.

“Well, yes. It was his nickname at camp, because of his last name. We all had them. Kathy was Micky, Robert was . . . goodness, it’s been a while. Do you remember, Bee?”

“Loon,” Mr. Stinger said. He hadn’t sat down once since he’d arrived and now he was pacing the length of the little living room like a trapped cat. “Robert Loomis. Went by Loon because of that idiotic laugh . . . look, Mo, I think you’re right. Let’s find another place for them to sleep, and maybe in the morning you’ll finally be willing to consider tearing that damn thing down after all these years.”

“You’re probably right,” Miss Barrett sighed. “Too many memories in there.”

I should maybe have been a little more sympathetic. A little gentler. But that’s what Nine is for. Me, I blurt.

“Wait,” I said, looking at Miss Barrett, “ _you’re_  Mo?”

She looked genuinely startled at that. Like it hadn’t occurred to her we would have even needed to know that—and why should it? After all, Nine and I hadn’t exactly told her everything we knew.

“Yes,” she said. “I mean, my name is Maureen but ever since camp people have mostly called me . . . why?”

Nine fished the envelope out of the box and handed it over without comment (and only a very faint blush). Mo scanned both letters and put a hand over her mouth.

“This one’s dated the day she died,” she murmured. “I had no idea. We thought she’d . . .” she broke off, leaving the thought unfinished.

“Can you  _please_  tell us?” Nine said quietly. “Actually, can both of you, if you both knew her?” She looked up hopefully at Mr. Stinger. “It might be important.”

“Well,” Mo said slowly, “I guess . . .” and the way she looked at Mr. Stinger, kind of pale and awkward, told me that he probably didn’t know even half the story either.

“No,” Mr. Stinger said firmly. “This is actually a wildly inappropriate conversation to be holding with two campers, and frankly I blame myself for allowing it to continue this long. Maureen, if you would be so good as to locate those blankets I think I can at least find some extra mattresses for these two young . . . ladies.”

But you could tell he didn’t really mean to say ladies.

Nine was scowling at Mr. Stinger, so she missed it. But I was looking right at Miss Barrett—Mo—and I don’t know how to describe what I saw in her face, except for just a minute, she looked like she was in real pain. Real, confused, guilty pain. And I felt such a sudden, secret kinship with her that I knew exactly what she’d thought happened and why she’d thought it, and I couldn’t keep my stupid mouth shut.

“You thought she went out on that lake and killed herself because she didn’t want to go away with you after all, and she didn’t want anybody to know.”

“Chris,” Nine said, kind of horrified. But I just knew I was right. It was like I was seeing how I was kind of scared  _my_  life might go, if I couldn’t get a little braver someday soon. And it _hurt_ , seeing how it could all go so wrong, so quick. I wanted to fix it for at least one person, even if I was pretty sure I could never fix it for myself.

“She wanted to go with you. You saw that letter. I don’t know why she couldn’t finish it, but—”

But I did. I remembered the scene with Bee hustling her out the door. I remembered the tidal wave of stationery strewn across the sleeping bag on the bed. She’d been in the middle of writing that letter when he showed up, and she hadn’t ever had the chance to go back and finish it. I'd have bet money that Lana Martinez had found those letters, probably reacted to them even worse than Nine and I did, given that she knew exactly who Mo and Kathy were, and put them away in a box that she hid where Kathy always hid it because she hadn't known what else to do with it when Kathy never came back from the walk to the lake.

“Oh,” I said, turning to look at Mr. Stinger, “ _oh_.”

And then I didn’t say anything else, because it occurred to me, a little late, that maybe saying anything more was kind of a stupid risk to take.

Unfortunately that didn’t occur to Nine. She’s got a problem with running her own mouth off, actually, but I try not to bring it up too much. Glass houses and all that.

“It was you,” she said, blinking up at Mr. Stinger. “It was you who took her out of the cabin. She didn’t want to go, but you made her. She was trying to break up with you because of Mo, but you didn’t know why, did you? She couldn’t tell you. It . . . it must have been really awful for her.” Nine’s face twisted with a sharp pity that made me feel funny. Like maybe she was imagining it really, extra clearly, what it meant like to be in Kathy’s shoes.

Or maybe I was just hoping she was.

“But she never came back from the lake,” Nine finished. “Because you left her there, didn’t you?”

And she looked up at him with such perfect, poised clarity, I could almost believe she was seeing it all for herself.

I think Mr. Stinger believed it too.

I mean, he was a grown man. If he’d been thinking clearly he probably would just have denied it and we’d never have been able to prove anything. But Mr. Stinger had spent fifteen years trying to get Mo to tear down a cabin everybody swore was haunted by the ghost of the girl he’d killed, and I guess that would take its toll on anybody. Besides, he wasn’t really the level-headed sort to begin with and he dove across the coffee table like the not-level-headed sort he was.

He was reaching for me. Nine agrees with me on that. She also agrees with my theory that he was reaching for me because I am shorter, and when I am sleepy I look surprisingly docile.

“Little did  _he_  know,” she added.

He could have found out for himself if Nine hadn’t deliberately shoved me out of the way, so he didn’t have any choice but to grab her instead. I picked myself up off the floor in time to see him back up several steps, pulling Nine along with him.

“I’m so sorry,” he said apologetically. “But nobody can ever know about this.”

Mo looked stunned at first, like she wasn’t sure how to process what was happening. But then Nine gave a squeaky little hiccup and it got through to her pretty quick.

“This isn’t the way to handle things,” Mo said. “Please. How about you just have a seat and we can talk?”

“This isn’t really up for debate.” Mr. Stinger had his fingers under Nine’s chin, forcing her head up so she had to go to her toes just to be able to breathe. “We’re all going down to the lake. You, me and the girls. And nobody’s going to make any sound or try to attract attention, or . . .” he squeezed Nine’s throat. She gave a thin, fluting wheeze that made my stomach churn.

I didn’t know what to do. We’d been in this kind of situation before so I felt like I should have known, but all I’d learned so far was how to stand still and look like I was willing to do whatever it took to keep him from hurting my friend.

So, basically useless.

“Come on Chris.” Mo gave my hand a supportive squeeze. I don’t think she had a plan or anything like that, but just knowing there was an extra person on our side was comforting. I let her guide me down the steps in front of Mr. Stinger, and we walked ahead of him down the path to the lake’s edge.

Once we were out of shouting range of most of the cabins, Mo seemed ready to retest the bounds of Mr. Stinger’s willingness to negotiate.

“This isn’t going to end well for you, Bee,” she said gently.

I found her tone so weird: she was talking like he was still the friend she knew, and not some guy who’d killed the woman she loved; some guy who had his arm around Nine, pulling her out into the water, keeping an eye on both of us to make sure we were following him into the lake.

The water lapped against my legs, frigid and unforgiving, but it was hard to mind the cold when I was writhing in hot fear for Nine and what he was ready to do to her if we didn’t keep up. As for Mr. Stinger, he was actually trying to justify himself to Mo.

“You don’t understand,” he said plaintively, like it really did matter that Mo accepted what he had done. “My father wouldn’t have understood. He always said I couldn’t follow through on anything. And he liked Kathy! If she had just agreed to stay with me, I could have made him happy. Dad would have been proud of me, being with somebody like her. But if he found out she’d turned me down . . .

“I tried to reason with her but she kept pushing me away. She said she had to go back to the cabin. She wouldn’t  _listen_. So I got a little angry. You know how I can do that sometimes. It wasn’t my fault. I only gave her a little push, just to make her see . . . it was an accident, Mo, you’ve got to believe that. I just got so mad—you know how I was back then. I didn’t think. I shoved her . . . she hit her head, and she didn’t get up.”

That had to be the stupidest reason to kill somebody I’d ever heard of, and I know a lady who got killed over a wall mural.

(Nine is reading this and she says that one was not exactly murder. I said if she wants to finish writing this she can go right ahead. She said never mind, I’m doing great.)

Anyway, as reasons go, I thought Mr. Stinger’s had to be the worst. I honestly don’t know how Mo kept a grip on her temper. If anybody had talked to me like that about Nine, like she was just something that got in the way and had to be taken care of, I’d have been furious. And who knows, Mo might have been seething on the inside but nothing in her face showed it.

“Bee,” she said, “your father is dead now. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

“But this isn’t about Dad,” Mr. Stinger said. “This is about what I did to Kathy, and I can’t get in trouble for that. Not for an accident. I called her name, I tried to wake her up, but she didn’t move. So I had to put her in the lake, or everybody would have known! Don’t you understand? It was awful.”

He shuddered, and from the look on his face I could tell he still saw Kathy lying on the rocks every time he closed his eyes.

“If it was an accident,” Mo reasoned, “there’s probably a better way out of it than this. What you’re doing now isn’t an accident. It’s going to be murder.”

“No, it’s not like that,” Mr. Stinger protested. “I don’t have a choice. If I leave you alive, _everybody_ will know. I can’t have that happen. This is the only way I can be sure you won’t tell anyone.”

“Why would I tell anyone?” Mo asked. “If you let these girls go back to bed there isn’t any need to tell anyone. What happened to Kathy was so long ago I’m sure there’s no sense in raking all that up again. I won’t talk; even if the girls did, you could say they were making it up. I’d back you up on that, for Kathy’s sake. Please just let her go.”

He wavered. For a second I thought she’d done it, and he was going to let Nine go. Then he shook his head regretfully, like it really did make him so sad he was going to have to say no.

“I’m sorry Mo. I promise I’ll—I’ll try to make it really quick.”

“Just like it was for Kathy?” Mo asked darkly, but I don’t think he heard the change in her tone. He was trying to crouch down, groping around for a rock with one hand while he kept his grip on Nine with the other.

“Yes,” he said absently. “Just like for Kathy.”

Mo bent at the knees, keeping her eyes fixed on him the whole time. She did exactly what he was doing, feeling under the water, and I heard a muted _clunk_ as she found what she was looking for.

Unfortunately, so did Mr. Stinger.

“What—” he said, and started to turn.

A white light flared behind us, like a flashbulb had gone off somewhere around the dock. Mr. Stinger reeled sideways, disoriented.

“Duck, Nine,” Mo barked, and Nine, though she couldn’t actually duck, did her level best to scrunch up in a tight little knot, leaving enough of Mr. Stinger wide open for Mo to haul back her arm and wing a rock the size of a baseball right at his head.

She made sure it was quick.

 

* * *

 

The police got there pretty fast, all things considered. I guess when you get a call from a girls’ sleepaway camp about the body of a guy who murdered a counsellor and tried to kidnap a camper, you take that pretty seriously.

After they spoke with us, the police said they’d keep in touch but for now we could go back to bed. Nine and I thought that was pretty funny, since it wasn’t like we’d really had a chance to get to bed in the first place. I guess when you’re that tired just about anything can seem funny.

Mo kept asking if we were sure we were fine. We kept promising it wasn’t anything that hadn’t happened before, we just needed to sleep, could we please go back to our cabin and sleep? Finally we either said it enough times she started to believe us, or else she just gave up trying to find out otherwise.

“All right,” she said, “back you go. Get some rest and I’ll make sure nobody bothers you until you’re ready to wake up.”

It was without a doubt the best news I’d heard all night.

There wasn’t much night left as we started back down the trail to Cabin B. We stumbled along sleepily for a few yards without saying anything, but then it just came bursting out of me.

“Don’t you  _ever_  do that again, do you hear me? Push me out of the way and volunteer yourself for—Nine that was insane. He could have killed you.”

Nine shrugged. “I know. But I didn’t want it to be you.”

“You think I wanted it to be _you_?”

She thought this over a moment, then ducked her head. “No, I guess not.”

“Anyway,” I added, “if we’re going to get killed, we should do it together. That’s the only way I’d entertain that thought.”

“Fair enough.” I thought I heard a smile in her voice as she said that, though her tone was graver as she added, “at least Mo finally knows Kathy would have gone away with her. I think that was worth all the rest of it by itself.”

“Absolutely. Can you imagine that?” I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered. “Going your whole life thinking maybe it was your fault that—”

“No, stop it,” Nine said sharply. “I don’t want to think about that. It’s too awful. If she’d never found out the truth and only ever believed . . . I mean what if it was—”

She choked off the end of that thought, but my head was going in that direction too, and my mouth ran away with me before my better judgement had a chance to catch up.

“You mean, what if it was us.”

At least I hoped she meant that. Otherwise I was going to die of shame, or at least have to trade bunks with Jess for the remainder of camp, and _that_ wasn’t going to make anyone happy.

But Nine was nodding slowly, and though I didn’t want to turn the light right into her eyes I did lift it a little higher so I could get a better look at her face. She looked scared to death at the thing we were almost-but-not-quite saying, which was appropriate, since it was exactly how I felt.

“I don’t mean you have to feel—I mean, it’s okay if you don’t feel the same . . . you know?” she said, with a helpless little shrug.

“You’re trying to say it’s okay if I don’t feel the same way because you’d rather just be friends with me forever than have to stop spending time with me because I couldn’t handle it if maybe you liked me as . . .” I tried to find an awkward-conversation-friendly way of putting it, “ . . . as something more than that.”

“Yeah,” she whispered. She wrapped her arms around herself and started shivering too, which was how I clued in to the fact that the night was way too warm for either of us to be shivering. That was pure nerves.

I don’t watch a lot of romantic stuff. Maybe there’s a really sweet, gentle way of warming somebody up when they are so nervous they’re shaking because they think you’ll be so freaked out by their crush you won’t ever talk to them again. Or maybe there isn’t. I’m no expert. But if you’re ever in that position, I will tell you what worked for me. I grabbed her hand as tight as I could and said “would it be okay if it was actually something a _lot_  more than that?”

She stopped shivering and stared at me in blank, disbelieving hope. My face got all hot and prickly, but I didn’t look away. If she could stare down a guy who was ready to haul her out to the lake to drown her, the least I could do was look her in the eye.

“Like, a lot more,” I added.

Her mouth worked, but it took a moment for words to come out.

“Are you . . . Chris, don’t be joking please. Or teasing. Don’t—don’t be saying stuff just because you think you should.”

I would have laughed if I hadn’t known it would make her think I was laughing at her. Instead I just snorted and said “well this would be the first time ever, wouldn’t it?”

She giggled, then clapped her hand over her mouth, eyes wide.

“I wasn’t laughing at you,” she promised. The words sort of blurred between her fingers. I promised I knew what she meant.

“But look,” I tugged her hand down, “you _can_ laugh at me if you want. Because I wasn’t even brave enough to say it first. Of course  _you_  would be.”

“I dunno,” Nine reflected, “I think if I were really brave maybe I might have said it years ago. At the Quackadoodle maybe, or even . . . you know, there was a time soon after we met. You were waiting for me outside the library, and I just thought you looked so _pretty_.” Her face flushed even in the dim light of still-mostly-night time.

I didn’t really know what to say to that. I tried, but I couldn’t think of something that was both reassuring and encouraging, and also maybe a little embarrassing for me in order to put us back on equal footing. So I leaned in (maybe a little too fast) and kissed her instead.

Except instead of kissing her I knocked my forehead against hers, so she yelped, then laughed, and tried to kiss me back.

Our first kiss probably didn’t go any better than yours did. Our noses bumped, our teeth clacked together, and it turns out kissing is a lot more awkward than they make it look on TV. But that was okay. Because it turns out when you’re kissing the person you’ve always wanted to kiss, you don’t even mind her nose smushing against yours.

“Maybe,” said Nine, pulling back with a giggle, “we’ll get better at it with practice.”

“Or even just sleep,” I suggested, and as soon as I said it, we both remembered how little we’d had.

“Yes,” Nine said fervently, “sleep. Let’s go get some.”

Playing the flashlight clumsily over the path, we ran back to the cabin.

 

* * *

 

The sky over the lake was lightening to pale grey as we peeled off lake-stinking clothes and tried to find bits of pyjama-type clothing that weren’t wet or dirty or both. The search was made even more awkward by how, even though we’d changed together hundreds of times before, suddenly I didn’t feel right looking in Nine’s direction. She stayed in the corner by her bunk, her back turned to me, so I figured she felt the same.

It might have stayed awkward like that for God knows how long, except after we’d found enough comfortable clothing to pass for sleepwear and turned around, we took one look at each other and dissolved into snickers. We looked about as ridiculous as people in mismatched camp clothing could ever look, and you can’t not laugh at people who look like that, even when you love them.

Especially when you love them.

Laughing helped, and so did cuddling down together in the one dry sleeping bag—Nine’s—knees knocking awkwardly into each other. We squirmed around until the cold of night outside began to seep away into shared warmth, and we relaxed into each other.

“S’better,” she murmured, her voice thick with sleep. I felt all the hours we’d been awake creeping up along my arms and legs, turning them to pleasant, heavy weights as I sank deeper into the mattress.

“If they wake us up before noon,” I said, “I’m going to throw the flashlight at them.”

“If they wake us up before noon,” Nine mumbled, “I’m gonna throw  _you_.”

I giggled into her hair.

“Yeah? Well you just try it. I dare you.” Then I realized my mouth was nestled against her hair, and she smelled . . . well she smelled a little like the lake, but also like the night air and _herself_. I liked that.

“Nine . . .” I whispered.

“Justasec,” she said, and stuck her head out from under the edge of the sleeping bag. “Kathy? Um, Kathy, are you here?”

There was no answer. Kathy had gone ahead to . . . well, wherever. When it comes to ghosts moving on, I honestly try not to wonder about that part too much, but I do like to think it’s something good. Certainly somewhere nicer than a cabin at summer camp, although at that moment, with Nine pressed up against me, soft and warm, the cabin at summer camp scenario was pretty close to heaven for me.

When there was no response from Kathy, Nine heaved a sigh of relief. I couldn’t help it, I started laughing, but she just made a cheerful, unrepentant _what are you gonna do?_ shrug at me.

“Look,” she said, “I like her. Nice girl. Glad we helped her. I could just do without an audience for this, you know?”

Then she cuddled down beside me again, and whispered drowsily in my ear.

I forgot that Nine always gets a little uninhibited when she’s sleep deprived. Some of the things she told me, about how she felt . . . well. Turns out she’s right.

Some things don’t need to be shared with anyone else.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for requesting Chris and Nine again this year. I got a little crush on your prompt last year and wanted to treat but ran out of time to do it right, so when I matched with you this year it felt like a gift! I just love these girls and I think there needs to be _so_ much more fic for them.


End file.
